Ghaziabad deaths: Police probe family dynamics, trace phones sold before incident

A day after three sisters died by suicide in Ghaziabad, the police continued to probe the unconventional family dynamics involving the deceased’s father, his three wives, and their five children. Investigators are also inquiring into two cell phones that belonged to the teenagers, one of which was sold six months ago and the other two days prior to the incident, the police said.

Speaking to The Hindu, a senior Ghaziabad police officer aware of the matter said that the police were matching the note left behind by the deceased with the handwriting samples of the three sisters; the note also had several mentions of how they were deprived of access to their “Korean” world with the parents cutting off their consumption of Korean TV series and K-Pop music “We are also reading the note carefully and speaking to the parents to understand their unconventional family set up and the impact it might have on their children,” the officer said.

According to the note accessed by The Hindu, the deceased expressed grief over not being allowed to teach their youngest half-sister, who is three years old, “their Korean culture”. “Whenever we would introduce her to her Korean relatives, Lee Know bhaiya and Kuina didi, Tina mummy would come and tell us why we are not teaching her some educational things instead of turning her Korean like us. We tried to make her one of us but you all made her Bollywood and forced us to see her as our enemy,” the letter read in Hindi. Drawing from this, the police are investigating whether the practice of polygyny had an impact on the psychology of the children.

“Till now none of the wives have raised any issues with the set up but we are investigating the circumstances that led to this set up,” the officer said. According to the police, the father of the deceased, Chetan Kumar, married Sujata and Heena, two sisters, at a gap of three years. While he is yet to submit the court record of marrying his third wife, Tina, Kumar and she have a three-year-old daughter.

Meanwhile, the police are also searching for two cell phones owned by the teenagers that were sold prior to the incident. “We learnt during investigation that they owned two cell phones, one was sold off six months back and another was sold off two days prior to the incident,” the officer said.

The officer told The Hindu that the post-mortem report revealed that the deaths occurred due to haemorrhagic shock caused by ante-mortem injuries, including fractures, and added that while all angles were being investigated, no FIR had been registered so far.